1. Field of the Invention
The invention is in the general field of computerized decision-making tools, in particular tools for qualitative analysis of issues such as corporate, product, service or cause branding, marketing, business strategy and communications messaging.
2. Description of the Related Art
In some areas of group decision making, particularly areas relating to taste or subjective opinions or qualitative assessment, often the collective opinions of a large group of individuals are viewed as the most optimal or “best” solution.
In the business world, this sort of statistical averaging approach is somewhat related to problems encountered in certain types of group decision-making, here exemplified by brand management. Branding, (e.g. a corporate, product, service or cause branding) essentially is a way for a business to identify a product, range of products, or organization that, on the one hand, helps identify unique aspects of the product(s) or organization that will be useful to consumers, help make the product or organization attractive to consumers, and also helps distinguish the product or organization from competitors.
As a result, the disciplines of branding, brand analysis, brand strategy, marketing and business strategy have emerged that attempt to capture these considerations, and distil them into a unique message, statement, idea, set of ideas or attributes like a positioning statement, personality traits, brand promise, values, vision statement, purpose or mission statement that best represents the offer or organization in question. Here, the perspectives from a large number of different individuals who are familiar with the issues, subject, work, offer, solution, values, characteristics, traits, attributes, features, benefits, disadvantages, weaknesses, messages, statements, positions, personalities, promises, values, visions, purposes or missions (collectively referred to as “issues”) can be very valuable, because each individual will bring to the analysis their own way of looking at things, and a larger diversity of opinions will, in general, be more likely to capture the many different opinion and views that the outside world of individuals may have or will have about the issues or offer.
Unfortunately, prior art methods of group decision making, brand analysis and brand strategy tended to not effectively harness the diversity of opinions and insight that larger groups can bring to a particular problem. Group meetings, for example, quickly tend to become dominated by a few individuals, with the rest of the group often eventually deferring to a formal or informal leader, thus harnessing only a fraction of the group brainpower. Prior art computerized group decision methods, exemplified by U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,177,851; 7,308,418 and U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 10/848,989; 10/874,806; 11/181,644; 11/672,930; 11/672,930 and others tended to be cumbersome and difficult for non-expert users to use, and as a result failed to fully capture group insights into brand marketing and other types of group decision making.
For example, Saaty, US patent publication 2008/0103880 taught a computer implemented method and a system for collecting votes in a decision model. His methods, however, apparently focus on an analytic network process (ANP) model that weights factors such as goals, benefits, costs, risks and opportunities based on input from as few as one user.
By contrast, for the purpose of group decision making with respect to brand marketing issues, the resolution requires processing of opinion, subjective and creative factors, in addition to the more analytically quantifiable objective factors, such as the goals, benefits, costs, risks, and opportunities of the different outcomes. As a result, such ANP methods would appear to have limited applicability.
Bayer, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,311,190 taught a system for conducting surveys in different languages over a network with survey voter registration. This patent teaches various computerized survey methods useful for producing multilingual surveys, useful for working with voters speaking different languages and possibly located in different countries, but is also otherwise silent with regards to the problems encountered in typical branding exercises, where usually the study participants all speak the same language and may even be in the same location.